Build kickass websites and applications for all mobile (and non-mobile) platforms by adding HTML5 and CSS3 to your web development toolkit. With this hands-on book, you’ll learn how to develop web apps that not only work on iOS, Android, Blackberry, and Windows Phone, but also perform well and provide good user experience.

With lots of code and markup examples, you’ll learn best practices for using HTML5 features, including new web forms, SVG, Canvas, localStorage, and related APIs. You’ll also get an in-depth look at CSS3, and discover how to design apps for large monitors and tiny screens alike.

Learn HTML5’s elements, syntax, and semantics

Build forms that provide enhanced usability with less JavaScript

Explore HTML5 media APIs for graphics, video, and audio

Enable your applications to work offline, using AppCache, localStorage, and other APIs

Learn what you need to know about CSS3 selectors and syntax

Dive into CSS3 features such as multiple backgrounds, gradients, border-images, transitions, transforms, and animations

Make your web applications usable, responsive, and accessible.

Design for performance, user experience, and reliability on all platforms

Estelle Weyl

Estelle Weyl is a front-end engineer who has been developing standards-based accessible websites since 1999. She writes two technical blogs pulling millions of visitors, and speaks about CSS3, HTML5, JavaScript and mobile web development at conferences around the world.

The animal on the cover of Mobile HTML5 is aRacket-tailed Drongo (Dicrurus paradiseus). Thisdistinctive bird is notable for its elongated outer tail feathers, making iteasily recognizable in its Asian habitats. As talented vocalists,Racket-tailed Drongos possess a wide range of calls and can mimic otherbirds’ songs as well.In heavily forested areas, such as those where the Drongo normallylives, large mixed-species flocks form as hundreds of birds forage forinsects together. It is believed that the Drongo’s ability to imitate callshas to do with this feeding situation—the Drongo learns the alarm calls ofother types of birds and repeats them. This behavior has been likened to aperson learning short, useful phrases and exclamations in a variety oflanguages. Although African Grey Parrots can use human speech in the correctcontext, they have never exhibited this kind of situation-reliant behaviorin the wild. In contrast, the Drongo will use its language skills to itsadvantage, often by imitating the call of a raptor to create a panic amongthe feeding group, allowing the Drongo to steal food unnoticed.While Drongos can be quite aggressive when it comes to territory, theyhave a very playful and extended courtship display. Two prospective mateswill sing to each other, hop and turn about on branches, and drop objectsfrom high and then dive down to pluck them from mid-air. Once a pair hasmated, they build a small cup-shaped nest in which to lay the clutch ofthree to four eggs.The range of the Racket-tailed Drongo extends throughout the forestsof the Himalayas, the Mishmi Hills, and the islands of Borneo and Java. Assuch, the scholar Edward H. Schafer considered the Drongo the basis for thedivine kalavinka birds mentioned in Chinese and Japanese Buddhist texts.These immortal beings were said to have a human’s head and bird’s torso,with a long double tail and a beautiful voice. The name has been alternatelybeen translated as “exquisite-sounding bird” and “goodly sounding bird,”making the parallels all the more striking between it and the vocally giftedDrongo.The cover image is from a loose plate, source unknown.

Mobile HTML5 by Estelle Weyl provides a very deep insight into the world of the HTML5 standards, and how it got here. In today's fragmented divergent methods and approaches to building mobile applications, native or otherwise, this text gives a clear and concise explanation of the various aspects one needs to consider. In developing stuff that runs on mobile devices, HTML5 is only one part of the components the developer needs to know about. Estelle explains each of these components (HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript) with great clarity and with a subtle sense of humor, taking the opportunity to make digs and jabs whenever possible.

This book makes an excellent reference as well, looking back at the various methods and their examples as I next work on the hands-on learning process. I must say however, that while I have a much better understanding of what goes into writing mobile solutions using HTML5, there is much that this book leaves to other resources. Making something simple is not easy, and as a Windows Mobile 8 developer, Android (and IOS) platforms appear to still be in need of more standardization. Writing my first Android app in HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript will take more learning.